Cast in this unlikely role,
 ill equipped to act --
 with insufficient tact --
 one must put up barriers
 to keep oneself intact.
        -- Rush, "Limelight"

 They are mortal enemies.  Like Jews and Arabs, Jedi and Trekkies,
and of course, spaghetti and milk.
	-- Gimpy, alias G-Prime

========

 Alicia sat in a corner, frustrated. She had locked the woman into a 
storage closet, and shut Harlukia into one of the drawers that held 
dead bodies.

 The problem was, she still didn't know how to get out. The doors were 
locked, and everything that Alicia threw at them merely bounced back, 
bent or broken.

 Then, the door to the drawer which Harlukia was locked in was knocked 
off the wall.

 =====================================
 New Haven
 -------------------------------------
 it resembles my own mind
 except you happen to be insane
 
 Scene 1-6: Crosstown Traffic

 by James Howard
 =====================================

 Harlukia moved very slowly as he crawled backwards out of the drawer,
sluggishly sliding himself out of the locker.

 Harlukia was not moving slowly because of caution or physical pain,
but because of the severe sapping of power that he felt himself
being held under.

 Harlukia turned around to face Alicia and walked a few steps forward, 
but was not looking at her or at anything at all.  His eyes were 
glazed over and staring into space, looking as though something had 
him in complete surprise.

 Alicia began slowly circling around him, towards the bedpan she had 
used earlier that was at the moment behind Harlukia.

 "Geistenkinden," Harlukia mumbled to himself in shock.

 Alicia snagged the bedpan without taking her eyes off of Harlukia,
steeled herself and charged forward.

 "Rache," Harlukia mumbled to himself, his expression still vacant.

 Alicia held the bedpan in two hands and swung downwards as hard as 
she could towards Harlukia's head.

 The first hit didn't stir Harlukia at all.

 The second hit roused him a little bit from his contemplation.

 The third hit cleared his mind a little further, to the point that
he was now partially conscious of where he was.

 Alicia, again screaming the scream of the incredibly frustrated, 
brought the bedpan down across Harlukia's head so hard that the 
ensuing dent now made the bedpan completely unrecognizable.

 Alicia watched in fear as Harlukia's eyes snapped forward and then
screamed as the eyes focused intently upon her. 

 "You," Harlukia growled. 

 His eyes then rolled into the back of his head and he pitched 
backwards unconscious.

 Alicia dropped the mangled bedpan, walked over to a chair beside a 
wall and sat down.

 And took several deep, deep breaths.

 She would investigate Harlukia for keys and then put him in 
another drawer later.  For now, she was going to sit and perhaps
calm her nerves down a little bit.

========

 "I'm sorry!" Johnny Basquain whimpered desperately, attempting both
to curl into the fetal position and to skitter backwards as fast as he
could.  The tigers and panther sitting in a circle around him found
this quite amusing; one tiger happened to yawn when Johnny backed 
towards him, causing Johnny to leap into the air and make strangled
screaming noises as he scampered back into the center.

 Jebdorn felt that the man held no particular interest to him.  He 
smelled like fear, which was nothing Jebdorn was not used to; but that
wasn't the smell Jebdorn was following.

 Jebdorn could smell the man who was held inside a tight cocoon of 
webbing his spider minions had wound, and the man distinctly carried 
Harlukia's scent.  Obviously he had come into contact with Jebdorn's 
hated enemy quite recently; was this Harlukia's ally?  Enemy?  

 "Please don't eat me!" Johnny yelped, flopping backwards away from a
giant butterfly that happened to land on a nearby flower.  The 
butterfly seemed to pay no attention to him, but the tigers were again 
quite tickled by this.

 Jebdorn made the decision, as much as Jebdorn ever really 'decided' 
anything that wasn't instinctual, that the three of them seemed to 
pose no apparent threat.  Jebdorn gave his companions the order -- 
through pheromones, his main communication with his entourage of 
animal allies -- that it was perfectly okay to eat them now that he'd 
checked things out first.

 The tigers thought this quite acceptable indeed; they rose as one and
approached the center of the circle, where Johnny was at this point
making panic noises one usually associates with a small puppy.  The 
panther, who had not moved, watched intently as the tigers closed in;
they were all within a foot and a half of Johnny when the noise began.

 Jebdorn froze, and the park froze with him.  Jebdorn could 
instinctually identify the call of any animal that had ever walked 
this planet, past or present; and while the sounds something was 
making from roughly eight blocks away sounded familiar to Jebdorn in
some ways, it also sounded much like nothing Jebdorn had ever heard
before in all his existence.

 The noise halted then started up again, the roar of a terrible giant
mixed with the faint buzzing noise of something unnatural firing to
life.

 The noise, Jebdorn and Johnny both suddenly realized, was getting 
closer.

 Johnny brought himself to a standing position, his eyes as wide as
they were ever going to be as he stared into the distance.  He
then became aware that the tigers, as well, were all focused in that
direction.  The spiders, too, had turned to look; all creatures great
and small (which was still pretty great considering the size of the
creatures in question) were intently studying the approach of this
unidentified terror.

 Jebdorn felt the vibrations in the ground as the creature approached
and again heard the vicious, terrifying mixture of natural and 
unnatural sound that the gigantic beast seemed to be bringing with it.

 Jebdorn then did what Jebdorn did not usually do.

 Jebdorn gave the pheromone order to all the organisms accompanying 
him that, translated into English (if you could do that sort of thing
with scents), carried the message "Run the *fuck* away *right now*".

 Johnny looked around in amazement as the forest emptied itself of
life, the animals stampeding around and past him as they took off
in all directions that the oncoming threat wasn't oncoming from.

 Johnny found himself completely alone among the vegetation in the
park, except of course for two balls of webbing.

 "Karen!" Johnny called, running over to the nearest pile of webbing.
"Hang on!" 

 Johnny began ripping at the threads, tearing them apart as he tried
to dig Karen free.  The material was quite sticky, but Johnny was
able to counteract that by wiping the strands of webbing off on his
clothes every few seconds.  He kept at it, clawing at the cocoon of
threaded web, until a large enough opening was made that he could
reach in and pull Karen out.

 It took him a couple tries (either Johnny was particularily weak
or Karen was particularily heavy, and Johnny wasn't sure which one
he'd rather think was the reason), but he pulled Karen out from
inside the webbing and held her in his arms to check on her.

 "Karen!" Johnny called, shaking Karen slightly.  "Karen!"  Johnny
patted her cheek a couple times to try and rouse her from her faint.
"Karen!"

 Despite himself, Johnny found his concentration drifting off as he
gazed at Karen's sleeping face.  Johnny gradually fell silent as he
took in every curve, every line of her countenance and thought to 
himself about--

 Karen's eyes slowly wavered open as she gave off a low, small noise 
of waking up, a sort of soft "nnnrgh" as she came to.

 Johnny's eyes drifted up to Karen's and their gazes met for several
seconds.  Johnny opened his mouth to speak, and it was at this point 
that his brain locked up.

 "hhhhhh", Johnny breathed, staring into Karen's eyes.

 "Johnny," Karen began softly, "are the spiders gone?"

 "hhhhhh", Johnny reiterated, his brain still in suspended animation.
His mind sent the message that a nod was probably in order, and 
Johnny complied with a slight bob of his head.

 "Ohmigod!" Karen blurted, sitting upright out of Johnny's arms and
looking around.  "Charlie!"

 It took Johnny a couple seconds to run this through before his 
mind could start up again. 

 "Huh?" he asked, finally.

 "Charlie!" Karen called, running over to the ball of webbing that was
affixed to a fallen tree.

 Johnny ran over as well; he was still a bit dazed, and truth be told
he had actually completely forgotten Charlie was there, but Johnny
figured that the best way to score points with Karen was to act as
though Charlie held some importance to him.

 "Hang on, Charlie!  We'll get you out!" Johnny called into the ball.
Johnny reached down and began clawing at the webbing.

 "Here," Karen offered, moving Johnny out of the way.  Karen picked
up a fairly solid stick, poked it into the web and used it to pull
the strands apart with ease.

 Johnny glanced down at his clothes covered in web and felt extremely 
dumb for a few seconds.  When he glanced up again, Karen had pulled 
open a hole and was dragging Charlie out.

 "Hi, Karen!" Charlie said cheerfully, crawling out of the orb of web.
"Good thing you got me out when you did or I would have passed out in 
there."

 A look of bemusement crept onto Karen's face as she watched Charlie
wipe sweat off his brow.

 "It was really hot," Charlie added.  "So how are you?"

 "Charlie," Karen grinned, shaking her head and giving her brother a 
hug.  "You're unbelievable."

 Johnny felt his forehead wrinkle in frustration as he watched Karen
hug Charlie, who Johnny was quickly beginning to hate.

 "Johnny!" Charlie said, walking over to Johnny.  "You fought the 
spiders off? Good job, man!"  Charlie opened his arms and gave Johnny
a manly hug of support.

 Frustration and disappointment began having a knife fight in the back 
of Johnny's head as he looked at Karen over Charlie's shoulder.  Karen
smiled, pleased that things appeared to be going well.

 "Hey, you're all sticky," Charlie said, letting go of the hug and
looking down at Johnny's clothes.  "That must have been some fight."

 "Look, shouldn't we be heading to Kramer's right now?" Johnny asked.

 "That's right!" Charlie said appreciatively.  "Let's move!"

 The terrible noise of roaring and machinery again sounded, echoing
off the vegetation and causing the three of them to jump.  The source
of the sound was a lot closer than it had been a minute ago.

 "Oh, wait," Johnny said.  "Yeah."

 "Johnny," Karen asked nervously, "what was that?"

 "I really have no idea," Johnny replied.  "Shall we flee from it?"
Johnny turned and made as if to run away.

 "But Kramer's is that way," Charlie pointed out, pointing a finger
in the direction the noises were coming from.

 "We'll take a longer route," Johnny said quickly.  "A much longer
route."

 "I think you're just being silly," Charlie said, as booming 
footsteps became audible. "How bad could it be?"

 Fortune and Disaster tapped their coffee mugs together and shared
a hearty laugh.

 As soon as the word 'be' had left Charlie's lips the footsteps
grew louder to the point that their source was just out of sight.
Charlie turned around and saw a wall of ferns fifteen feet high rustle
slightly, then collapse.  

 Then Charlie saw what had knocked the ferns down.

 Well, okay, first Charlie saw the *teeth* of what had knocked the
ferns down.  *Then* he saw, as a whole, what had knocked the ferns
down.  It was ten feet tall at its highest point and nine feet wide 
at its thickest, and though Charlie couldn't actually get a proper
view from where he was standing he was pretty sure it had to be at 
least thirty feet long.

 What Charlie was looking at, courtesy of waste chemicals, radioactive
waste and the New Haven Sewer System, was the second largest alligator 
in recorded history.

 It parted its jaws and gave a roar that shook the earth around 
Charlie, the wave of air from said roar nearly knocking Charlie
off his feet.  Partway through the roar a noise joined the roar
that sounded like a large motor revving to life, creating a ferocious
din of cacophonous terror that shook Charlie to his core.

 The gargantuan reptile closed its mouth and the noise it was 
creating halted abruptly, leaving in its wake a vacuumous silence that
seemed to envelop all existence.  

 In the stillness the dawn broke behind the monstrous beast and slowly 
filled the vacuum of silence with a flood of morning light as the
beast and the man stared each other down.

 Charlie turned away from the alligator and gave Karen a look of 
complete and total amazement, receiving a roughly equivalent look
from his sister.

 "Oh," Charlie said, breaking the silence.

 "THIS WAY, YOU DUMBASSES!" Johnny called from all the way back at 
the park entrance, waving his arms over his head.  Johnny had taken
off running as soon as the word 'could' had passed through Charlie's
lips.

 "I think we should run, Charlie," Karen stated flatly, slowly 
starting to back away from the alligator.

 Charlie turned numbly to look at the alligator.

 "Maybe it's friendly," he suggested, a small tone of hope entering 
his voice.

 The alligator opened its maw and gave another earsplitting swell of
noise.  When it closed its mouth again Karen and Johnny were halfway
to the entrance.

 "I don't know why I argue these things with you," Charlie suggested
to his sister.

 "Shut up and *run*!" Karen told him.

 The rhythmic booming behind the two of them let them know that they
were now being followed.

 "Shit!" they heard Johnny yelp as they looked behind them, and when 
they looked forward again Johnny was again running as fast as his legs
could carry him.

 And screaming, of course; we can't forget the screaming.

 "This is ridiculous!" Johnny wailed at the top of his lungs, which
quickly proved to be a bad idea as he began to run low on oxygen and
slowed down considerably.  Johnny pulled up the second Charlie and
Karen reached him, bending over and panting heavily.

 "Johnny, come on!" Karen screamed, then made a sound in her throat
and froze up as she looked past Johnny.

 A lone giant spider, which had been feasting on a fruit stand, gave
the three of them a look as though to ask them what the hell they
were *doing* leading that thing this way.  Another roar came from 
the pursuing alligator and the spider leapt out of the fruit cartons 
and skittered down the street.

 Charlie and Karen both grabbed Johnny by the shirt and dragged him
along behind them as they began running again, unintentionally 
following the path of the spider as they fled the oncoming reptillian 
giant.

========

 Michael Lime was a bit grumpy.

 His laptop had run out of power while he was halfway through a very 
scathing article about the turf wars going on before his very eyes in 
New Haven, and it was only after a couple minutes that he realized
he had left his power pack in the hotel.

 Then the "turf war" in question, a neighbourhood-wide brawl between 
the bone shamblers and the fishmen over which of the two groups had 
the rights to some dumpsters with particularily tasty stuff in them, 
had forced Michael to abandon his laptop altogether or, alternatively,
be crushed and subsequently eaten when the brawl spilled into the 
alley he'd been sitting in.

 Michael had looked back while he was running to see the laptop 
explode when a shambler stepped on it and had felt perhaps more anger 
than was necessarily called for at that moment.  In Michael's defence,
it had been a very expensive laptop; but that was not a very good 
reason to stop, blurt out an indignant "Hey!", and throw a nearby rock
at the shambler's head.  Not a good reason at all.

 So Michael, who was now a hated enemy to all bone shamblers and was 
now forced to lug around an old typewriter he'd found lying by a 
garbage can if he wanted to get any writing done, was feeling a bit
cranky about the way things had been going for him lately as the sun
hit noon in the sky above New Haven.

 Michael found an empty alley to stay in, plunked the heavy typewriter
down on a wooden crate, sat on the concrete ground with his legs folded,
adjusted the piece of paper the typewriter had been left outside with 
for whatever reason, and typed.





 
                    r






 Michael stared at the single letter on the page for a very, very long
time.

 "Writer's block," he said to himself.

 "*Writer's block*," he repeated, feeling his shoulders tense up.

 "*Writer's block*?" he asked himself, staring at his hands in 
frustration.  Michael stood up, threw his head back and screamed in
rage for several seconds, the scream of a man for whom things cannot
possibly get any worse.

 Michael let his scream die, collapsed back down to a seated position,
and just then noticed that a big golden dog was studying him curiously
as it passed by the alley.

========

 Casey was quite impressed by the little man in the fuzzy red hat.

 It wasn't often that Casey ran into humans who could make big noises
like the one the interesting man in the funny hat just made.  Casey
showed his appreciation of the loud noise by barking twice and wagging
his tail in a merry way.

 The human gave him a look of surprise, then picked up his big lumpy
black box and quietly walked away as if trying to avoid getting into
trouble.

 Casey felt that was too bad, but didn't bother to try and change the
interesting man's mind.  Casey was on a mission.

 One snack from the garbage can later, Casey was back on his other
mission.

========

 Archbishop Luccini, Father Gregory Bruno, and Father Jonathan 
Edgewood were sticking very close together.  That was the only way
they were all sure they were all still there.

 "Are they gone?" Father Bruno whispered as the three of them made
their way through the back alleys of the downtown.  He had asked 
that question many, many times over the last eight hours.
 
 "They must be," Father Edgewood whispered.  "They must be.  It's
daylight, for His sakes.  That must surely mean they aren't out
anymore."

 "But they warped the very fabric of reality around them!" Father
Bruno whispered in protest.  "You witnessed it!  How are we to know
when we are or are not safe?"

 "Keep your wits about you, fellows," Luccini reminded them, quite
blatantly not whispering.  "For it is His warning that Evil can 
strike at anytime, and indeed from anywhere--"

 Edgewood looked up to see something very large hurtling towards the 
city from the sky and shrieked like a small child, causing the other
two to jump and look into the sky.

 "A meteorite?" Father Bruno asked incredulously, his face expressing
a very surprised sort of panic.

 The object, possibly a meteorite, plummeted towards the city at a 
frightening rate of speed.  Archbishop Luccini began, unconsciously,
to recite passages from the Bible in a low and fast stream of 
babbling.

 The three holy men watched in terror as the object fell towards the
city, then reacted with incredible surprise when the object suddenly
appeared to bounce off of some invisible wall above the city and
fly back upwards and out of sight.

 Archbishop Edgewood's mouth hung open.  He even tried to make a 
couple sounds, but had no luck with it.

 "Has He blessed this town?"  Father Bruno asked, his voice filled
with a slightly puzzled reverence.

 Archbishop Luccini looked back and forth between his two compatriots.
"What *was* that?" he asked.

========

 "Sir?"

 "Hey! There you are.  Great, great!  Let's wipe the suckers off the
map!"

 A pause.  "...Hoo boy."

 "Sir," third voice, "you aren't going to like what you're about to
hear."

 Long pause.  "Oh really."

 "Yes, sir."  Pause.  "It's about your plan to neutralize the conflict
zone of New Haven using nuclear technology--"

 "Oh, just call it what it is, general.  We're wiping them off the 
face of the Earth!  No need for all the jargon."

 "Fine."  Second voice.  "Your plan to wipe them off the Earth, then."

 "Thank you.  What about my plan?  Are we going to execute it soon, or
what?"

 "You aren't going to want to hear this," third voice.

 "Just spit it out!  Are you saying we can't do it?"

 "Sir," third voice, "I'm saying we just tried a couple minutes ago."

 Silence.

 "Did it work?"

 "You may want to be seated, Sir."

========

 "The United States Military Nuclear Armaments Deployment Branch 
Sector #33049 fired one small nuclear warhead upon the unresolved 
conflict region of New Haven as of 12:53 PM on September 30th, 2001.

 "Upon deployment of the miniature warhead, deployed not as an act of
aggression but as a preliminary test routine of firing conditions, the
explosive nuclear device was seen to fly directly towards the intended
target.  Upon reaching a certain point in its flight the miniature 
warhead abruptly changed its path of motion, through no fault of the 
men and women of the United States Military, and detonated in a 
residential area not indicated in the target zone of firing.

 "We extend our condolences to those adversely affected by the 
unintended collateral damage inflicted today.

 [Insignia of United States Government]"

 That was the official letter that went home that day.  

 What it was in effect saying was that the Government had fired a 
small-scale bomb at New Haven, basically to see what would happen.

 There had been hope that perhaps the nuke would pass through the 
barrier unmolested and make waste of the city, and then as Colonel 
Joseph Miller of the United States Military Nuclear Armaments 
Deployment Branch Sector #33049 had put it "we can all fucking go home
already".

 If not that the strike would succeed, there was hope that perhaps
the bomb and the shield would cancel each other out, and then as
Private Christopher Giovanni put it "we can go in there, shoot some
undead shit, y'know, get some action".

 Nobody had been hoping for what happened.  That would be because
nobody had been expecting what happened.

 The United States Military Nuclear Armaments Deployment Branch Sector
#33049 had called over the United States Military Light Infantry 
Branch Sector #58511 so that they'd be out of harm's way, just in 
case, and then let the nuke fly.

 The United States Military Nuclear Armaments Deployment Branch Sector
#33049 and the United States Military Light Infantry Branch Sector
#58511 had watched intently as the warhead flew straight towards the
unsuspecting city of New Haven, skimmed gleefully across the top of 
Steven Carroll's protective barrier like a pebble off a shallow pond 
and kept on going until it plowed into the neighbouring town of North 
Redsdale on its second bounce.

 The two branches of the military watched from very, very far away as
a blinding orb of light enveloped the town of about 200,000 people and
the town crumbled so fast that it appeared to disappear in three 
frames of animation--a quick, choppy series of slides that went town-
white circle-no town.  Hi-ho.

 As Private Richard Zhamnov of the United States Military Light 
Infantry Branch Sector #58511 put it, "what... *oh*.  Holy shit.  That
wasn't right."

========

 Silence.

 "I am in awe."

 A pause.  "Sir?"

 "I really am.  You know that?  I am amazed beyond cognizant thought.
*Jesus Christ*, you two."

 "Sir, this is the plan of action you--"

 "Go away.  I need to come up with a better plan."

 "That's for sure."

 "And I'll have none of your lip, general.  Good day."

========

 TEASER:
 
 Will Charlie, Karen and Johnny escape the giant alligator of
monstrous peril?  Will Alicia escape the hospital basement of vampiric
intent?   Will the Vatican Operations Group survive the Geistenkinden
onslaught?  Will Michael Lime overcome writer's block and survive 
despite all odds?  Will any of these people come even *close* to 
escaping the city?  Will the Government take another stab at solving
the New Haven crisis by any means necessary?  And, of course, what 
will Casey eat next?

 Only Fortune and Disaster are at liberty to say.  Well, them and the
next author, anyway.

========

 AUTHOR'S NOTES:

 I apologize if there are any glaring, gigantic errors in this body of 
work.  I failed to procure prereaders for this, you see, the reason 
being that in seven hours I am on a bus to Minneapolis for a five-day
band trip.  So of course a week ago was the perfect time to sign up 
and write for New Haven.  You know.  :)

 And it's been a while since I've written for the ol' Indie Madnesse,
so let me just say that I'm very glad to be back.  Because unlike the
previous months where I've been very busy and haven't been writing 
anything, now I'm at the point as a writer and as a human being where
I am very busy but writing nonetheless.  

 Just you wait until I'm in *University*, boy, lemme tell you!  
That'll be a piece of *cake*!  Were cake made out of every fear I've
ever known, and also out of pain.  </Leffel>

 But, yes!  Anyway.  I completed something!  Whoo!  :)

   -James Howard
    05/09/01